This invention relates to templates for identifying hypodermic injection sites on the body, and more particularly to templates for repeatedly locating unused injection sites and determining which of the sites have recently received an injection.
Persons afflicted with diabetes, allergies and the like must receive a hypodermic injection of medicine daily, or at some other regular interval. Only certain parts of the body may be safely used for such injections without excessive discomfort or an inordinate risk of penetrating major veins or arteries. The parts generally used are on the thighs, the buttocks, the backs of each shoulder, and portions of the lower abdomen. Each of these body parts has an area known as a shot area, or shot range, in which a plurality of shot sites for hypodermic injection may be identified. Each shot range is about four inches square, and may include up to about thirty shot sites.
Each hypodermic injection insults the body tissue and adjacent muscle at the point of injection. It may take up to six months for the skin and muscle at the injection site to completely heal. If another shot is injected into the site before it is healed, a hard spot or knot will develop at the site as a result of the additional shot. Hardening may develop which makes the skin leathery, and it may be difficult to insert a needle in that site at a later time because the hardening caused by the double wound remains after the wound heals. Also, the process of osmosis by which the injected drugs enter the bloodstream may be inhibited if the site is not healed completely when it receives an additional shot.
It is difficult for a patient to determine which shot sites have recently received an injection because the wounds caused by the injections heal quickly at the surface of the skin. Also, the patient does not know that the site has been used recently until after the second shot is injected, when a knot develops at the site. As a result, it is not unusual for a patient to make many double injections and have several painful knots at any one time.
Physicians often suggest that patients locate unused injection sites by placing their hand against a particular point on the body, putting their thumb and fingers in a particular configuration, and making successive injections across from the thumb and adjacent fingers on succeeding days. For example, the base of the thumb may be butted against the hip bone, and the fingers may be directed across a line which is perpendicular to a line intersecting the center of the knee and the hip bone. Shots may be injected across from the thmb and adjacent fingers on succeeding days. After five days, the thumb and fingers may be moved forward toward the knee to another row for injections on succeeding days, and so forth, until the shot range of the thigh is used. The patient may then use the shot range on the other thigh, a buttock, back of a shoulder or lower abdomen. The first thigh should not be ued for injections again for about 180 days. This method of determining which sites have not recently received an injection is accurate, but does not identify previously used shot sites, and requires the patient to use adjacent shot sites most of the time. The patient may forget which shot sites have been used and inadvertently make an additional injection in a previously used site. Also, the patient cannot increase the distance between shots on succeeding days without great difficulty and inevitable errors.
A mechanical device has been developed which may be used to locate a previously used general portion of the body for additional injections, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,542,022, and other devices have been suggested which locate injection sites corresponding to particular internal organs or a fetus, as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,547,121 and 2,245,350. However, none of the devices described in the patents just identified may be used to identify a set of sites in a shot range for hypodermic injection and repeatedly locate sites which have not recently received an injection by identifying used and unused shot sites in the shot range. Thus, there is a need for a device which identifies such a set of sites and repeatedly locates unused sites on the skin in the set of sites for hypodermic injection.
Accordingly, an object of this invention is to provide a template which accurately identifies a set of sites in a shot range for hypodermic injection, and repeatedly locates unused sites in the set of sites for injections on succeeding days.
Another object is to provide a template which enables the user to increase the distance between shots on succeeding days.
Yet another object is to provide such a template which is relatively inexpensive and may be discarded after use.